At the hour and twenty four minute mark, slightly more than half way in their time together, famed bitcoin (BTC) skeptic Peter Schiff brought the conversation back to his favorite foil: cryptocurrencies are bunk. It was Mr. Schiff’s third appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and he took the opportunity to blast the world’s most popular decentralized money, insist a recent debate between him and the CEO of Shapeshift on the subject was rigged, and how he believes BTC’s price will crash further to $1,000 and lower.

Skeptic Peter Schiff Blasts Voorhees Debate, Bitcoin

The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) keeps bringing bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff back on. And it’s no wonder, as each time the two men hold close to three hour uninterrupted conversations over the last four years, the public seems to eat it up: JRE #445 (2014) not quite a quarter million views, #1002 (2017) has racked up over 1.1 million views, and #1145 (2018), of only a few days ago, already is nearing 700k views.

When all is said and done, over two million people would have been exposed to free market economics and expressly mainstream US libertarian thought — those, and also why bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are horrible bubbles.

Widely acknowledged as a gold bug, Mr. Schiff explained to Mr. Rogan how “… that’s the whole selling point of bitcoin. It’s digital gold.” He further noted BTC does have similar properties, but that its being math and not physical means it ultimately lacks real utility (something like the Greater Fool theory).

“Technically, I lost the debate, but I think it was rigged,” Mr. Schiff then concluded, moving his monologue through a non sequitur. The reference is to a contest on the subject of bitcoin hosted by The Soho Forum in New York City earlier this month, whereby he debated Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees. Mr. Schiff blamed his loss on a largely pro-bitcoin audience, which he also assured was told to fib on the initial poll of their true feelings about crypto so as to ensure his eventual defeat.

BTC Will Fall Thousands More in Price

The format of the debate was such that winners were determined by the percentage grown to a debater’s position — so even if the audience was already in the bag for bitcoin, all Mr. Schiff had to do was convince more of them than Mr. Voorhees. That didn’t happen, and by a lot.

Transitioning on his way to explaining how bitcoiners are cultish (Mr. Rogan described them as very “tribal”), naive playboys living it up in his new home commonwealth island of Puerto Rico, he admitted to having missed out on a pretty radical runup since BTC’s inception to now. He explained the digital asset was “taylor made” for him and his politics, but he “knew” even back then it was something of a scam. He called it a bubble. He also insisted a lot people are destined to be hurt financially.

Ironically, as Mr. Schiff was once again predicting BTC’s death (something he’s been doing for almost a decade), the price actually rallied to well above the seven thousand mark. Nevertheless, Mr. Rogan followed Mr. Schiff’s line of reasoning, asking, “… you think it’s going down?” Mr. Schiff affirmed enthusiastically, patting himself on the back as knowing bitcoin well enough not to be fooled … as he mistakenly referred to “Satoshi Nakamora” [sic] as its pseudonymous founder (Mr. Schiff is also famous for malapropisms). He ranted, when BTC dips “… and it keeps falling, it goes down to $1,000, or lower, where I think it’s going … that’s going to create a lot of problems.”

Perhaps, Mr. Schiff’s most salient point was when, in his doom scenario, BTC loses a lot of people a lot of money, this will bring in government crackdowns like never before. The fear, he insists, is that such a crash and resulting government response will prove to the public how free markets and capitalism are best served through intense regulation. He believes that will inadvertently buttress hopelessly “flawed” fiat currencies, something everyone in the current debate dreads.

Does Peter Schiff have a point? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below.

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C. Edward Kelso

C. Edward Kelso has written hundreds of articles as a journalist covering a range of topics from international finance, regulation, to cryptocurrency philosophy, interviews with luminaries, and book reviews.

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